My Name Is
by Ikonopeiston
Summary: How many times can a man bear to be called ...? Largely rewritten because the first version was truly dreadful.


A/N: This drabble was suggested by an associate who wondered what would happen when Nooj finally lost his patience. I asked him.

I do not own any of these characters etc. I just cherish them. Square-Enix hold the deeds to their existence.

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**My Name Is ...**

Nooj was not an emotional man. However he was human despite the fact that his body was very nearly half machina. An intimate encounter with the demi-urge Sin some years ago had robbed him of his left arm and leg while leaving equally vital parts of his anatomy quite intact. It was due this and the fact he was human that he was on his way to Guadasalam. Behind him lay the increasingly tangled affairs of the Youth League, that ill-assorted collection of misfits he had inadvertently collected after the defeat of the great monster and the dissolution of most of the militias. Before him beckoned his humanity.

As he lay back in the hover, he thought about the events since the end of the unifying war. As he had become progressively less fit for active duties, he had turned his still fierce energies toward compiling a history of Spira. With that in mind, he had begun to collect those spheres which were still to be found in various places around the world and to study them in an effort to understand why things had happened as they did.

The occupation suited his solitaire nature, permitting him to ignore any upheavals outside his immediate concerns. He rarely left the headquarters compound anymore save to pay his routine visits to the villa in Guadasalam. In actuality the operation of the enterprise on Mushroom Rock Road was principally the province of a dedicated corps of women who had found their fulfillment in cushioning his existence.

Women, he thought as the scenery scrolled past. Men were willing to obey him but women would die for him. He mused with a certain wry amusement on the fact he was surrounded and buffered by women. He, who had lived his life as a Warrior, was now a scholarly historian peering through wire-framed spectacles and defended by an army of amazons.

When he disembarked at the shadowy entrance to Guadasalam, he felt the unease he nearly always felt when approaching the sinister place. Once the home of the despicable Seymour, it had grown up around the great chateau which had been headquarters for the half-breed. After the death of Sin, when the spoils were being divided, the building had been offered to Nooj. For reasons he could not later recall, he accepted the white elephant.

When he had time to visit the villa and has seen with his own eyes what he owned, he had tried to give it away to others who might better use it. He offered it to those family men and women he knew who could fill the rooms with progeny and noise. There were no takers. Both the eccentric interior decoration and the expense of maintaining the sprawling house worked against him and so it remained on his hands.

Since Nooj was a man who valued simplicity and found luxury incompatible with his austere lifestyle, he never even thought of living in the chateau. However since he was also a practical man who disliked waste, he eventually used it as the domicile for a succession of mistresses. It was ideal for the purpose, being sufficiently far from League headquarters to let him compartmentalize his life, yet close enough to permit easy access as his requirements dictated.

The current lady-in-residence was one LeBlanc, a woman of startling beauty and unequaled stupidity. She had won admission to his bed only because of her skill in the arts of concupiscence. He did not visit her for conversation.

Her installation had seemed a good idea at the time. LeBlanc was affectionate, almost too much so, and willing – oh, was she willing! Nooj shook his head ruefully at the memories of her willing ways. He was a man of strong appetites and she was in every way his match, always avid to learn new games as well as embroider on old ones. The heart-shaped water bed in the master bed-room inspired many of her elaborations and, inspired in turn by the heart-shaped couch, LeBlanc set out to turn the entire chateau into a bower of libidinousness, a temple to lust.

Nooj had not minded her nest building habits, except for the considerable expenses she incurred, until it suddenly appeared – in the bedroom – opposite the bed! From somewhere LeBlanc had managed to procure a life sized statue of him, complete with machina limbs, spectacles, and cane and had placed it in a glass case overlooking the bed. When he was involved in amorous games in that room now, he felt as if he were engaged in a menage a trois with himself as the third party. It was frequently off-putting and he had first restricted their activities to positions from which he could not see the doppelganger then insisted she install a curtain which could be drawn over the case when he came to call.

However, it was not the decorating scheme which chiefly irritated him and made him consider bringing her tenure in the house to an end. It was her annoying, no – maddening – habit of assigning babyish names to people and things. It was bad enough to hear her call the bed the 'beddy-boo' but her name for him ... He declined to even think about it although he knew he would cringe again when he heard it emerge from between those perfect lips.

He had come to Guadasalam today for one reason and a simple one at that. He needed the physical release her pliant body could offer him at any moment's notice. It saved so much time not to have to woo and flatter, wine and persuade. He was a busy man and this was not romance, it was the scratching of a physical itch. Nooj was not sentimental. Of course, he could have had any of the women at Youth Headquarters but he preferred not to mix pleasure with politics.

Nooj curled his lip in distaste as he opened the door of the chateau with his key. This was a matter to be done with as quickly as possible, like a necessary trip to the dentist. He wished he did not make himself observe the formalities custom dictated. Maybe whores would be better after all. No, there were always diseases to be wary of and he was a fastidious man.

As he closed the door behind him, those two idiotic personal servants of hers came rushing up. What were they called? Piggy and Wiggy? Over and Under? Crashing and Bore? He couldn't remember so he settled for a courteous nod in lieu of using their names.

"Is the lady LeBlanc at home and receiving?" He always asked although he could perfectly well have proceeded up the stairs without being announced. It was his house, after all.

"Yes, my lord. Shall I announce you?" The taller and more intelligent of the two at least knew how to behave in society.

"If you will be so good - ," he started only to be interrupted by a shrill cry from the upper landing.

"Love! You're here! Come right up!" LeBlanc was bending over the railing, her breasts, as usual, threatening to spill out of her extreme décolletage.

He paused to admire the view which reminded him of the purpose of his visit then made his painful way up the curving staircase. While the woman was redecorating the house, why couldn't she have put the bedroom on the ground floor or installed a lift so he didn't have to climb these damned stairs? After all, the bedroom was the only room he ever used here.

Nooj paused to catch his breath when he reached the landing and was immediately enveloped in arms, lips and perfume. It was a heady mixture, one which made his need all the more pressing. Without a word, he swept her toward the bedroom and the heart-shaped bed.

She was ready; she was always ready. He wondered, as he let her remove his clothing, if she was equally ready for other men when he was not availing himself of her services. He doubted she would be so foolish; her position in his bed assured her position in Spiran society. She would not risk everything by making him the cuckold. Then she was upon him. She knew his preferences and catered to them with authentic enthusiasm and a rare talent.

For some time the only sounds in the lavishly appointed room were those little moans and cries, the half-stifled shouts and the soprano interjections which reflected the varying degrees of pleasure experienced by the occupants.

His need supplied and her desires satisfied for the time being, they lay on the buoyant bed comfortably entwined. "I've missed you, lover." She murmured into his ear.

"I've been trying to keep the peace between my people and the Bevelle mob," he explained. "Those religiously insane bigots want to continue to sit on all the old secrets and add some more."

"That reminds me, love. I have another sphere for you." She trailed her kisses down his neck and her fingers down his chest.

"That's good." Nearly all the spheres she found and presented to him with such pride were useless – pop music and the like. Nooj was too courteous to tell her this and she thought herself to be a great sphere-hunter and benefactress.

"Can you stay for dinner?" She ran a seductive finger across his abdomen.

"No. I'm needed back at Mushroom Rock." He pushed her hand away and swung his legs awkwardly over the side of the bed. In doing so, he caught sight of the statue though the imperfectly drawn curtain and recoiled before the brazen stare of his own replicated eyes. He had his suspicious as to the real reason she had bought that thing.

When he was dressed again and pulling his hair back into order, he heard her stirring as she wrapped a robe about her naked body. Here it comes, he thought, clenching his teeth and closing his eyes.

But, Noojie-Woojie, why can't -" She began wheedling.

"My name is Nooj." He said softly, for perhaps the three hundredth time. "My name is Nooj." It was a little louder the second time.

LeBlanc pouted, "I like to call you Noojie-Woojie. It sounds more loving."

"No. It does not sound more loving. It sounds childish and absurd." He was carefully adjusting his boots and picking up his cane.

"I'll just keep calling you Noojie-Woojie so you know how much I love you. It's our private name."

"Don't call me that again." She was oblivious to the cold anger growing in his voice.

"But, Noojie-Woojie ..."

Nooj spun around, nearly losing his balance, "Madame! It is not my practice to strike women; it is also not my habit to permit myself to be made the fool. I have been willing to allow you great latitude in return for your services to me. But this has become too much." Irritation had finally overwhelmed convenience.

He caught her by the upper arm and with a twisting thrust, sent her whirling back against the wall, knocking her breathless as she slid to the floor, her legs straight out in front of her. Without sparing her another glance, Nooj turned the cane in his hand so that the weighted knob was at the far end. He brought the improvised club down on the glass case behind the curtain with a full swing of his powerful machina arm. The glass shattered like a thin skin of ice, sending glittering shards flying across the room. Nooj paused in satisfaction for a moment before reaching inside the broken case and pulling out the statue. With ominous concentration, he dismantled it, carefully detaching one part from the other until there were left only isolated bits of painted metal which did not even resemble a dismembered body – only the scraps seen when a tool is shredded for recycling.

He then turned his attention to the bed, shifting the cane again in his grip so that the narrow end pointed outward. Like a fencer, he lunged at the heart-shaped monstrosity and punctured it. Water seeped onto the lavender carpets, darkening them like blood from a mortal, unstaunchable wound. With great deliberation, he proceeded to destroy the vanity table, the mirror and all the remaining furniture in the room, adding the feminine fripperies from the closet to the pile which he mechanically trampled into a sodden mass. Nooj stood in the midst of the wreckage, smiling an oddly triumphant smile. Limping over to the wall where the aghast LeBlanc sat, still shocked into stillness, he fastened his fingers in her hair and drew her to her feet.

"Now, Madame, I think it would be best if you and your henchmen packed your goods and found another place to live. I will, as a token of my gratitude, send you a sum sufficient to pay for other lodgings for you, but not them, for the next three months. When you have found a place which suits you, sent the bill to me. To - Nooj. Is that understood?'

Numbly, too frightened to cry, she nodded, "Yes. Nooj."

He walked out, satisfied in every way. He had never liked nick-names.

Jan 4, 20055181298


End file.
